Hello, this is Bryan Castle with another Serve the Song screencast. Today we’re going to use Reason 4.0 in conjunction with Pro Tools 8. Together, this two programs are a killer combination so let’s get right into it.
So I have here a fresh Pro Tools session, nothing else is open. Let’s start by creating a new track. Make this as a stereo instrument track. And we want to view a couple of the things here to view instrument and inserts. So the way we bring Reason into the picture here is open up Reason as an insert on this track. So we’re going to go to instrument, Reason. And that launches the rewire plug-in and also the Reason application. So Reason is now running through Pro Tools. It depend on Pro Tools, it’s not running by itself.
So, we can start out by just removing the mixer, we don’t need that for this project. We also don’t need the Mastering Suite. And we will leave just the hardware and of this. So let start up by creating a piano track. So that will use an NN-XT.
And we see here Grand Piano is already loaded up. And we’ll press tabs and look at the back. We see it’s wired up to Channel 1 and Channel 2. And we head back in the Pro Tools. And we’ll set the rewire plug-in to match the Channels that we had selected in Reason. In this case, mix L and mix R correspond to Channels one and Channel two. So we’ll keep that how it is. And we can get there out of the way.
And under instrument, the output. We’re going to set that on NN-XT. And now, we are just about ready to start recording, let’s just head back into Reason just for a second and throw on the click track. I mean line them up a little bit. And let’s get rid of this loop thing that kind of mess this up.
Alright, and now we’re back into Pro Tools and we are ready to start recording. So here we go. Nope, not quite ready yet. We got to record enable our track. This is something I always forget to do. Alright, here we go.
[Demonstration]
Okay. So we see here that it recorded straight into Pro Tools, actually as MIDI. So we have full editing flexibility here right in Pro Tools. So if we double click on this region, it’ll open up the MIDI editor which is pretty awesome in the new Pro Tools 8. You can actually go in and move different notes around. You can go all the ins and outs of the MIDI editor screencast or another ten screencast, it gets so deep.
Okay. So let’s move on and add another instrument here. This time, let’s go for–or a nice big pad on top of that piano sound. So, we’re going to create a new track. Again, it’s going to be a stereo instrument track. And we can copy over the rewire plug-in down to this new track, we’ll hold down Option and drag it.
Okay. So this is setup for now. Let’s head back into reason and create our new instrument here. So let’s try this new Thor Synthesizer, sounds kind of nasty. Alright, so we’re going tab, look at the back and we’re going to wire this one up to Channel 3 and Channel 4. You could see, it goes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and so on. And on the top to bottom thing. And we’re going to select our pad patch here. Let’s try. Let’s try this one, okay. And we’ll head back into Pro Tools. Open up that rewire plug-in on the new track. And set the rewire to Channel three and Channel four to correspond to what we had just selected in Reason. We can get this guy out of the way.
Select Thor as the output on that Channel. And now, we are ready to go to record on next instrument. Here we go.
[Demonstration]
Okay. So once again, we have our MIDI sequencing of that Thor pad. We can kind go in and mess around whatever we want or we can just move on.
The next thing I want to show you here is how to bring in actual audio, not MIDI from Reason. For that, we are going to use a little bit more complex routing here in Pro Tools but it is not too bad. So the first thing we’ll do, once again is create another track. We will make it a stereo instrument track again. And we will copy over the rewire plug-in. And we will had into Reason at this point and create the next thing. Let us try it a drum, a drum sound. We will kind of go for something quick and easy for the screencast. I will just open up a doc directs.
And let us select something here. And we will go back into–we are going to view the back here, press Tab and route the output of the doc directs into Channels 5 and Channel 6 this time. Okay.
Back into Pro Tools. Open up the rewire plug-in on this latest track. And this time, we are going to set at to Channel 5 and Channel 6. Okay. Set the output to doc directs and now we have doc directs [Demonstration] playing to this track.
[Demonstration]
But in order to record that audio, we need to create a new track and route it throughout that audio to it. So this time, let us create a stereo audio track. And the way we are going to route this is we are going to view the I/O, the ins and outs here. And on our third track, we are going to set the output to Bus 1 and 2, and set the input pf the new track to Bus 1 and 2.
So now, any audio coming from the third track will be routed into this one through Bus 1 and 2. Okay. So we can record enable the new track. This is where we are going to record our drum sound. For this project, what we can do is just press Preview to get the drums playing.
[Demonstration]
And if we just start recording, it will start the load right from zero. So here we go.
[Demonstration]
Alright, as you can see here, this–we have a real audio, you know just a raw audio track here. We have the wave forms recorded straight into Pro Tools. This is not MIDI. So I mean, that was kind of a rough recording. Obviously, you might want it go back and go back into that piano track and line up all the notes to match with the drums, before even re-record the instruments now that we have our drum track, something I like to do a lot. But this gives you a basic idea of the mechanics of working with the Reason 4.0 and Pro Tools 8 in conjunction.
So I hope this helped. For more info, articles, tips and videos visit servethesong.net.
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